There’s a homeless man who sits for hours at time on the steps of my current nest. Maybe he lives there. He’s ragged and tattered and good natured. The other day, as I was coming in, a well dressed young woman came out of one of the apartments in the complex and he greeted her. She said “You’re so lucky. You don’t have to deal with anything! You don’t have appointments to keep, or errands to run. Your life is so easy!”
I stood still, she whisked on by and I looked back at him. Our eyes met, I smiled, he smiled and we both nodded.
This reminds me of years ago, as a single mother in Charleston, South Carolina, when I used to do therapeutic massage to make a living. I barely made ends meet but slid in under the finish line every month, never late, never one bill unpaid. More than half of my clients were affluent males. The men always chatted while I worked. They seemed to need an outlet for all of their unsaids. We women share more easily with each other than men do, and my massage seemed to allow them the luxury of sharing safely. On many occasions they would say “I would give anything to switch places with you, you have no idea of the pressures that making lots of money creates. I have a boat, a mountain home, a beach house, my downtown lifestyle, my kids go to private school, and I never have time to enjoy any of it! I work all the time! I look at you and you’re so happy, it must be nice. It must be easy.”
We humans seem to love to imagine that living some other way would be easier than what is at the moment. Every single one of us on the planet, no matter how much money or not, no matter how divinely figured and beautiful or not, no matter how old or young, no matter how healthy or ailing, no matter how well our love relationships are working, we are all the same!
Loving what is. Loving our lives. Loving that others cross our paths to say ‘hello’ and blessing them as they leave. And joy is born.